


You'd Really Have Thought

by orphan_account



Category: Cats - Andrew Lloyd Webber
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 04:17:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18358460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Munkustrap can't save them all.





	You'd Really Have Thought

She's back, is what they're saying.

News travels with startling swiftness among the tribe, given their scattered, diverse natures across greater London, but nevertheless, word crept along the tall walls, the back alleys, the empty rat-riddled pipes. News whispered beneath doorways, shivered through bramble, murmured on the wind. Demeter is back.

Demeter is back among them, because Demeter _lived_.

Knowing better, he did not seek her out at the Junkyard, where even on the nights when the moon hid behind the clouds, there was still the long shadows of roaming toms and queens for whom the comfortable indoors was not enough, or not an option. Munkustrap knew: she would not be seeking company any time soon, which, he reflected, ought to be enough to dissuade him. But still, he went to her, knowing he must.

Pampered, human-groomed, proper. Behaved. These are the sorts of descriptors that much of the tribe would attribute to their guardian, but so too is this: hunter. 

Nevertheless, it took him the better part of the evening until he caught her scent. Even at this hour, cars rattled across the bridge above, and the wind made the river lap restlessly at shores of rubble, trash, and concrete. He kept to the shadows which fell long and grey like the stripes of his coat, picking his way through as he approached that place of concrete pillars and broken glass, beneath the bridge that crossed the inky water.

His guard was not up as it should be, assuming himself the predator.

A great weight slammed into him, and the world spun as his paws slid on rubble. Sharp points, catching in the fur of his shoulder, thick grey and black deflecting the worst of it. His first thought: it was him. A lure, a trap, Demeter as bait. Munkustrap twisted, blindly striking and feeling the blunt of his paw impact flesh, but the yowl that followed was not Macavity's fevered hissing, but-- 

" _Demeter_."

Munkustrap reared backwards, climbing to his hindfeet as he watched the queen recover herself. Rage extinguished. Shock. He stepped forward, reaching. "Demeter, I'm sorry--"

She was in motion before he could finish, teeth bared, launching herself with claws extended. Better instinct seized him, Munkustrap ducking low, tumbling her aside. Twisting outside the range of her next swipe, and the next. Her face was the picture of contorted fury, eyes wild and bright amongst pale fur, teeth exposed. And he could see it, the pink patch of flesh where her fur had been scraped away, the exposed black stitches of human healing, the scarlet of leaking blood.

"Demeter, enough!" Munkustrap could not keep the worry out of his tone, even as he barked his command as if she were a kitten again.

"Stay _away_ from me," she snarled, now pulling back. Her hand wandered to the injury at her side, clutching her oozing stitches. "Come any closer, I'll kill you."

Munkustrap lowered himself until his tail touched the floor of rock and dirt, his paws up, spread. "I won't," he promised, imploring. "I'm not going to touch you. Please--" --as she began to turn-- "--don't go. I." Lower still, sinking down into a crouch, until Demeter dragged her attention back to him. Her fur was still bristled, her eyes wide, but fear had replaced aggression. Munkustrap could defer to that, at the very least. "I heard you'd returned. We were worried."

" _We_." Her disdain, caustic. Not uncharacteristic, but so rarely directed at him.

Above them, a heavy truck passed by, and seemed to shake the foundations of the bridge. Demeter tensed, giving a full-bodied twitch, as if she could take flight at any moment.

"We," Munkustrap reaffirmed, in a bid for her attention. "And me. _I_ was worried. I heard terrible things. I'm so happy you're alive."

Demeter straightened her posture, and Munkustrap could look upon her properly. Her body was thinned, diminished, _please_ to anyone? He stretched one paw out in front of him, that long, familiar, graceful motion, begging reciprocation. "Sit with me. Or let me accompany you home."

"Is that why you came?" Demeter's voice, hushed, her eyes narrowing. She, too, sunk into a crouch, but did not come any closer, every inch of her primed to flee. "Is that why you followed me, hunted me? Do you think I came all the way out here, because I want to be accompanied home?"

Munkustrap lowered his paw. "I can't begin to fathom," he said, slowly, "why else you would think I would come. I wanted to see you. Ensure you're alright."

Demeter sneered. "I'm not alright. Now what?"

"Demeter, I don't understand--"

"I'm not coming back, Straps." Now, finally, a little like her old self, a gentleness easing into her tone as if summoned their by old nicknames, but the content of her words almost entirely incomprehensible to him. Not coming back? As if understanding his baffled silence, she pressed, "I refuse to come back. If I didn't scare the little ones before, I will now. How long, until the pity of the other queens turns cold? How long, until the toms are turning their backs? Until the mothers are warning their children away?"

She crept forward a few inches, but not close enough to bridge the swiftly growing schism. "They'll see it in me, brave one. They'll see the things I've seen. That's what you should be protecting them against."

"Demeter," Munkustrap said, but he felt as though he were talking to the ghost of a queen. As if she'd already disappeared. "I would never let them do that to you. In time, you'll see. You'll heal, become strong again. Become beautiful."

Demeter's soft laugh trailed behind her as she turned her shoulder to him, and crept towards the edge of the river, her tail dragging limply behind her. In spite of his promises, Munkustrap followed, staying low to the ground, one ear slanting off to listen to their surroundings. They were entirely alone, here, save for the relentless thrum of the city at night.

"Beautiful," she said. "Beauty isn't a thing you can become twice, Straps. It isn't like strength, to be reclaimed with time. You become beautiful once, when you grow. And then after that…"

"That isn't true."

"What do you know of it?"

"I'm looking at you now, aren't I?"

Demeter's mouth quirked into a smile he could only just see from his angle. "Someone should tell that brother of yours: you were always the better flatterer." She sat, then, as if the violence of those past few minutes had exhausted her bones. "I'm not coming back. I can't do that. Become like _her_ , haunting the edges of the ball, being whispered about."

She turned, just enough to see him out of the corner of her own eye. "I thought you were coming to finish what he started, you know."

Munkustrap almost recoiled, the idea profane. Wrong. "How could-- why would I--"

"Don't be like that. I know what you are: noble, courageous, all of those things he isn't. But I could have made you do it. And then, perhaps…" She closed her eyes. "I'd stop seeing him in my dreams. Or even when I'm awake. You can't imagine the agony, when they found me, when they cradled me in their arms and took me in, forced my body to live. It's why I'm not going home. They shouldn't get to choose."

"Stop," was as gentle as Munkustrap can make it, but still evoked a twitch from Demeter as she turned away. "You need to stop driving yourself mad like this."

Her tail twitched. Aggravated. He continued.

"I'm sorry, that I wasn't there. I wish I had been, I wish I hadn't only heard of it, and that it hadn't been too late. But I'm here now. If it means staying by each other's side, to make sure this never happens again, then that's what I'll do. Please, let me look after you, now."

He heard her sigh, deep and fond. "You're so stubborn." He almost relaxed, until she added, "You're not getting your way this time." A pause, lengthy, in which he had nothing to say, and so she said, "Did I scratch you very hard?"

"Deeply. I might die."

Demeter didn't laugh, but he could sense the smile in her words when she said, "That's what I'll miss about you. The humour everyone else thinks you don't have." Her tail twitched again, curling back around her paws, her settled hindquarters. "The sun is coming up. You should go back, before all the warm spots are taken. Don't think about me too often, brave one."

He left her there as the sun was beginning to grey the sky, and wondered whether you could mourn someone twice.


End file.
